Jubilant crowds on the streets of Damascus have been celebrating what until recently seemed unthinkable—the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s hated regime. The Syrian army collapsed while the regime’s over-burdened allies in Russia and Iran could only look on, hanging their former ally out to dry. The lightning offensive was led by Turkish and US-backed right-wing Islamist forces. The success of their attack revealed the Assad dictatorship’s fundamental weakness: that it lacked any kind of meaningful support and anchorage amongst ordinary Syrians or its imperialist backers.

Uniforms and weapons left behind by soldiers and officers litter the streets and roadblocks. The presidential palace has been looted, as has the Iranian embassy. Both Assad’s Prime Minister and the Syrian state television channel, as well as Syrian embassies around the world, surrendered to the forces that took the capital of Syria, Damascus.

What will happen after the initial shock and celebration on the streets, which is echoed by Western media and governments alike? Neither the victorious Islamist ‘rebels’ nor the imperialist powers involved on both sides represent the interests of the region’s people. Workers, the poor, and the oppressed in Syria must build and organize their own way forward, independent of any imperialist power or reactionary Islamist groups.

It is not clear what kind of regime will be established. The right-wing Islamist group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) dominates now, but other armed militias will also vie for influence. The popular hope for change, to finally realise the seemingly impossible dream of getting rid of Assad, was crucial to the rapid development of events. The mood of liberation that exists today also means a new regime may behave cautiously for a while. 

The Middle East has become a key theater of war in the broader inter-imperialist conflict between the US and China. The balance of power in the Middle East has now been fundamentally altered, with major international consequences. In the China bloc, Iran’s ‘axis of resistance’—Iran’s coalition to resist US and Israeli imperialism—is fatally undermined, as is Russia’s power base in the region. In the US bloc, Erdogan, the President of Turkey, and Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, have been strengthened, at least for now. 

From Crushed Uprising To A Bloody Civil War

The Assad regime in Syria was already weak.  The widespread hatred of his brutal dictatorship was on display in the initially peaceful and strong popular uprising in 2011, part of the revolutionary wave that swept the Middle East known as the Arab Spring. The powerful Syrian uprising grew, but unfortunately lacked “a unified leadership that could represent the protesters, speak for the revolution, control the pace and message of the protests, and develop a strategy for the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad — or for the time afterwards,” summarised Aron Lund in his book Syria is Burning.

When Assad crushed the 2011 uprising with military force, Islamist militias seized on the opening to become the dominant opposition force, with mass recruitment of young people. But these Islamist militias are not democratic, workers’ and youth-run opposition organizations that would actually represent the historic 2011 uprising. In the ensuing bloody civil war, more than half a million people were killed and 12 million were forced to flee their homes.

We must draw lessons from Egypt in 2011, when the Mubarak dictatorship was overthrown. In Egypt, we saw how the counter-revolution will regroup and hit back when the working class does not fully seize power. It bides its time in the military, and has the backing of both local capitalists and imperialism, whose power it serves. In both Egypt and Syria, senior officers are also powerful capitalists. In Syria, the danger is now greater because the overthrow of Assad was led by a military force, rather than a mass movement

Since then, the brutal civil war and deep social and economic crisis that followed have wiped out all the dictatorship’s decisive strongholds. There was a ceasefire and temporary stabilisation established in 2020 relied on the military support of Russia’s bombers and Iranian-backed Hezbollah ground troops. Since then, the morale of the Syrian army has collapsed.

The 2020 ceasefire was negotiated by the regimes in Turkey and Russia. It was primarily about establishing a kind of independence for Turkey-backed Islamist groups in Idlib, in northwest Syria, while keeping Assad’s regime intact. Russia’s aerial bombardments would cease in return for the Islamists staying within designated borders. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham established a regime there under its leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani. HTS emerged from the Nusra Front, which differed from both al-Qaeda and ISIS by presenting itself as a Syrian (i. e. nationalist) organisation rather than an Islamist cross-border force.

After the respite of the 2020 ceasefire, the Assad regime was gradually accepted by rival dictatorial Middle Eastern regimes that had provided military support to the opposition during the civil war. But as recently as this autumn, he reportedly told Hezbollah and Iran, his primary backers, that he did not want to get involved in “their war.” His appeals to his former allies and Middle Eastern regimes for military support in the last week therefore yielded no results except for Russian aerial bombing during the assault on Aleppo. Both Russia and Iran evacuated citizens from Syria. Hezbollah had already withdrawn most of its troops to Lebanon earlier.

Russia and Hezbollah (Assad’s primary backers) were already stretched thin by the war in Ukraine and the Israeli military’s attacks in Lebanon. The weakness of Assad’s allies left an opening for the Islamist militia Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham to go on the offensive, which happened on the day the ceasefire between Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Israeli state was signed. 

Imperialist Influence In The Region

Netanyahu in Israel has welcomed the fall of Assad as a further weakening of Iran, Assad’s former ally. The IDF has attempted to capitalise further on the situation with major air strikes destroying Syrian military bases, including its naval fleet, and ground incursions by Israeli troops into Syrian territory in the Golan heights close to Damascus. This was initially announced as a “temporary” measure, before Netanyahu quickly doubled down on the move, adding “the Golan will be part of the State of Israel for eternity.”

Turkey, along with Qatar, was the biggest sponsor of Islamist right-wing militias during the 9-year civil war in Syria, so many arms came in through Turkey. One of Turkey’s goals was to crush the Kurdish PYD (Democratic Union Party, a left-wing Kurdish party in Syria) Rojava, the Kurdish autonomous region in northeast Syria. The Kurds cannot rely on support from the US or other imperialist powers, shown by how the Turkish army (an important NATO power) has repeatedly attacked Rojava. The HTS was under Turkish patronage, but it is not directly controlled by Turkey. So while Turkey’s power has been strengthened, the real balance of power with the HTS is not clear. 

On the surface, the fall of Assad is welcomed by governments and politicians in the West, while at the same time reminding them of their own fragility. They now talk about the need to ‘stabilise’ Syria, which is the same reason they propped up Assad’s regime for so long. The Syrian regime co-operated and supported the first US war against Iraq, in 1990–91. Assad was then a very obedient follower of neoliberal capitalist policies and carried out major privatisations—some ten families benefited while ordinary people in Syria lived in extreme poverty, laying the groundwork for the widespread discontent that led to the 2011 uprising.

Both Israel and the US have carried out massive bombing campaigns against Iranian-backed groups and remaining ISIS strongholds in the country. But despite stated goals of “defending democracy,” their actions are about demonstrating military power, thereby warning and continuing to repress workers and the oppressed in Syria and the entire region.

While the positions of Israel and Turkey have been strengthened in the short term, the main power in its bloc, US imperialism, will soon have a President Trump who recently said the US should not intervene in Syria. However, that was before the latest dramatic shifts, and his tone could quickly change if he sees an opportunity for regime change in Iran. While much is still unclear, the likelihood of Trump pursuing an aggressive “maximum pressure” line against Iran, including harsher sanctions and threats, has now increased. Tensions in the region have only increased since the fall of Assad. 

For Russia, aligned with the China-led bloc, the fall of Assad is a major setback that once again punctures the image of strong Russian military power. This could have implications for other governments that rely on Russian backing, as in West Africa. The significant blows to Iran’s regional power negatively affect both Russia and China in the global inter-imperialist struggle against the US-led bloc.

What Next For Struggle?

Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, the leader of HTS, has made statements about religious tolerance and respect for minorities, but there is no reason to trust him. The HTS is an undemocratic army that has just taken power. Promises of rights and elections are textbook statements from coup-makers. After Assad’s fall, the HTS imposed a curfew and called on the regime’s police and civilian authorities to continue until further notice.

Meanwhile, their allies in the Syrian National Army (more directly under Turkey’s control) have launched new military attacks against the Kurds in Manbij and Raqqa, on the unofficial border between Rojava and Turkish-controlled areas. At the same time, Kurdish troops reportedly drove the Syrian state army (formerly pro-Assad) out of the cities of Deir ez-Zor and al-Bukamal in the east.

When the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in 2021, ousting another ineffectual local regime which was hung out to dry by its foreign imperialist backers, they also made promises such as maintaining girls’ education and women’s right to work. These promises, aimed partly at pacifying Western imperialism and partly at preventing street protests while the new rulers consolidated, have since been gradually broken and oppression has worsened.

Workers and the oppressed need to organise as quickly as possible. Democratically organised cross-religious and cross-ethnic defence committees are necessary steps, as is workplace and neighbourhood organising, initiated by the working class as the most powerful collective force in the region. The 2011 revolt was strongest among young people, who made several attempts at organising with local coordination groups. But these focused more on social media and spreading information, rather than concrete organizing and a clear program.

Today, there is the danger of believing that any new regime will lead to steps forward. Dictatorships, crises, and wars in the Middle East and beyond are the result of the capitalist system. Military power and economic exploitation go hand in hand. The only force that can break this is mass struggle led by the working class, equipped with a revolutionary socialist program and our own independent organizations.

International Socialist Alternative Says:

• Mass struggle for democratic rights for workers, women, Kurds and all the oppressed.
• Democratic defense committees across religious and ethnic lines. Democratic control over arms and armed groups.
• Hold those responsible in the state, police and military to account.
• Opposition to all imperialist intervention. Stop the bombings, withdraw all foreign troops.
• Stop all military attacks on Rojava.
• Bring natural resources and the key sectors of the economy under public ownership and democratic control.
• Reconstruction with housing and work for all. Raise minimum wages in line with the real cost of living.
• Build a revolutionary socialist party to fight for international socialism.
• For a socialist Syria, with the full right of self-determination for all peoples, in a socialist federation of the region.